Biker boy's 8 year old neutered male cat sprays indoors. I was over there last night and bb was rehanging a curtain he'd just washed cat pee out of. Not 10 minutes later Harry hopped up on the chair next to the window and sprayed all over the curtain. He's apparently always done this, even with a clean bill of health. He has a cat door so he has access to the outside, plenty of food, clean water, a clean litter box, a playmate and plenty of snuggles. Everything a kitty could want. Any ideas why he does it? Or how to stop him at this late stage? We're talking about living together and I'm not keen on the idea of bringing a cat into my house who's going to ruin the carpets or the hardwoods or my expensive (not washable) window coverings. I don't know all that much about cats because I haven't lived with one for years...

Rehoming him is not an option. He's family, but I'd like all the members of my family to pee here they're supposed to!

The thing is, Harry pees in the box too. So I don't think it's a matter of not liking the litter. But I will see if biker boy thinks that might do the trick. I think it's a behavioral thing, but I really don't know.

i'm willing to be it's a behavioral thing. if he's an inside & outside kitteh he might be marking his territory inside to say "back off" to those kittehs be meets outside. even though those other cats don't enter Biker boy's home, his cat's still marking it as "his".

cat pee is tough to remove from fabric, too - so even the slightest hint of it they'll catch on to and re-mark.

As I've posted elsewhere, we resorted to medication (daily prozac in food) to alleviate chronic, maybe habitual spraying. We've noticed that the culprits are very sensitive as to whether their litter boxes have been cleaned. If we don't scoop twice a day, we face an increased chance of inappropriate spraying. We have a couple of different styles of litter boxes, and thankfully, they seem to enjoy spraying in the covered cat box. When we clean that box, we take a paper towel, spray it with Nature's Miracle and wipe down the interior of the box to clean the sprayed bare areas. We call this giving the boys a clean slate. It seems to help.

Our female cat peed in the hallway a lot (a big puddle almost every day when it was at its worst) and the vet said we should clean it with green soft soap or vinegar, because cats like the smell of most other cleaning products such as bleach, alcohol and perfumed soap.

We didn't think it would help, but since we've started cleaning with a soft soap solution, the peeing has almost completely stopped, except for one or two incidents when we were lazy keeping her box clean.

Maybe if you wash the curtains with soft soap to make them smell less attractive and then use something else to make him love his box, that will break the pattern. Good luck!

Has bikerboy taken the cat to the vet? It could be a behavioral issue, but he might want to rule out anything medical first. If the cat is peeing on the curtains, maybe he's seeing other cats outside and marking his territory.

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I have been going through a similar thing with one of my cats for the last ~6 months. It only started when the woman in the basement apartment moved in a brought an older (neutered) male cat with her. I brought him to the vet for tests to rule out anything medical, but he is one healthy cat. Cats outside of windows, outside territory (he is allowed outside on a lead/harness in the summer, and there are several neighbourhood cats around) have never bothered him before the other cat moved in (including living in 3 different houses in 2 different cities). Like your kitty, he pees in the litter box and sprays on the walls/furniture/etc. I clean everything up with urine enzyme cleaner and it hasn't made a difference, have tried the Feliway diffusers in the house, keep the litter ultra clean, and no luck. We are moving in a month to get away from the downstairs cat and are hoping that works! I hope your situation doesn't get to this point! Best of luck!

Could be totally because of where he's living now, like Robynn mentions. And though it didn't work for her, giving Feliway a try is never a bad idea. Were you guys in the room when he did the spray? If yes, might need to treat it like a potty training issue, and grab him and take him straight to the litter box to remind him where that's supposed to be happening.

One of my cats was spraying on the pillows on our bed. I caught him twice, and he went straight into "time out" (a crate large enough to not be confused with his carrier that he goes to the vet in and just large enough for a small litter box but not big enough for him to have any sort of stimulation or way to be happy and comfortable in there)

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